The Court-Martial of Captain John Armstrong: Life, Death, and Politics in America’s First Regiment

By Ellen Denning Smith

John Armstrong was destined to be a humble farmer on the Pennsylvania frontier until the American Revolution changed his life. Rising from private soldier to an officer in the Continental Army, he later served in the First American Regiment, foreruner of the U.S. Army, that was tasked to facilitate the settlement of the Northwest Territory. He endured the fledgling army’s growing pains, was selected for a covert operation in Spanish territory to explore the Missouri River, and fought Native Americans in two disastrous military campaigns. The army subsequently evolved into a successful fighting force despite its second-in-command’s quest to destroy the career of its commander, Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne. Armstrong became an unwitting pawn in a treacherous game crafted by Brig. Gen. James Wilkinson, of whom Theodore Roosevelt once wrote, “He had no conscience and no scruples . . . In all our history there is no more despicable character.” Rebuilding his life in Ohio and Indiana, Armstrong became a noted government official, militia officer, land speculator, and pioneer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669824008

Book preview

THE COURT-MARTIAL OF

CAPTAIN JOHN ARMSTRONG

Life, Death, and Politics in

America’s First Regiment

Ellen Denning Smith

Copyright © 2022 by Ellen Denning Smith.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022908446

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/11/2022

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1 On the Border and Outside the Pale

Chapter 2 American Shores

Chapter 3 The Revolution, 1775–1778

Chapter 4 An Officer and Gentleman, 1778–1783

Chapter 5 Wyoming, 1783–1784

Chapter 6 Birth of the Regiment, 1784–1785

Chapter 7 Army Life

Chapter 8 The Temperature Rises, 1786–1789

Chapter 9 Another Treaty, Another Misstep, 1787–1789

Chapter 10 The Missouri County, 1790

Chapter 11 Kekionga, 1790

Chapter 12 St. Clair’s Campaign, 1791

Chapter 13 Massacre on the Wabash, 1791

Chapter 14 Wilkinson, 1792

Chapter 15 Fort Hamilton, 1792

Chapter 16 A Court-Martial at Fort Hamilton, 1793

Epilogue Life and War’s Next Chapter

Appendix 1 Wilkinson, 1796–1825

Appendix 2 Standing Army vs. Militia throughout U.S. History

Notes

Bibliography

To David, Courtney, Cara

and Declan

And to the many John Armstrong descendants

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Relating the story of my fourth great-grandfather would have been impossible without the efforts of a kinsman, Charles F. Cochran (1876–1963), who gathered documents from family sources, organized Armstrong’s many papers, researched our common ancestor’s life through published and unpublished sources of the time, interviewed family members, and visited places of significance to the colonel’s life with the apparent objective of someday publishing his biography. I am equally grateful to another distant relative, Mrs. Ruth Coffman, who had the foresight to entrust her cousin’s papers to the William H. Smith Memorial Library, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, in the early 1970s where they remain today. These papers provided the framework for my work.

Many individuals have helped me throughout my writing journey. I am grateful to the helpful staff of the William H. Smith Memorial Library where I spent uncounted hours over a multiyear period researching Armstrong’s papers. Special thanks go to Mr. Robert L. Greene Jr. of the Hunterdon County, New Jersey, Records Management Office whose help was invaluable in tracing the early history of the Armstrong family in the American colonies and to the staff of the Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, Records Office and the Northumberland County Historical Society in Sunbury who provided assistance in locating information concerning the family’s Pennsylvania years. Anthony Wayne’s papers were accessed at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Staff at the US Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and the Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana, guided me toward finding extensive material concerning the First Regiment and its officers and men.

The staff at the Valley Forge National Historical Park; the Brandywine Battle Historic Site at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; the New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Park near Newburgh, New York; and the Morristown, New Jersey, National Historical Park added necessary dimensions to Armstrong’s Revolutionary War experiences. A special thank-you goes to David Hospador of the Third Pennsylvania Regiment of reenactors for sharing the history of the unit’s formation during its participation in the commemoration of the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse at the Monmouth Battlefield State Park, Freehold, New Jersey. Additional information on the Third Pennsylvania was accessed at the Robert Hutchings Goddard Library at Clark University, Worchester, Massachusetts. Visits to the Yorktown Battlefield Visitors Center were essential in understanding the siege. Information on the southern campaign and James Armstrong was found in Georgia at that state’s archives in Morrow, the Reese Library at the University of Augusta, the Augusta Genealogical Society, and the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah. North Carolina’s Guilford Courthouse National Military Park and the South Carolina Historical Society at Charleston also provided essential information regarding James’s military career.

Information regarding John Armstrong’s postarmy years was gleaned at the Cincinnati History Library and Archives at the Cincinnati Museum Center. Jeffersonville, Indiana, has been a particular source of enlightenment and inspiration. I owe special thanks to Nancy New Hemphill and Jeanne Burke of the Clark County Museum for their leadership in rehabilitating John Armstrong’s gravesite and apprising me of his connections with the county. My sincere thanks also goes to Dr. Daniel T. Brown of St. Charles, Missouri, for lending his insights into conditions of the Missouri/Mississippi River region during Spanish administration of the territory.

Trips to the Scottish Borders were invaluable in learning about both the Armstrong clan and the reiver culture. I am especially grateful to Ian Martin, project manager of the recently restored Gilnockie Tower and overseer of its current operation, for his availability in meeting with us multiple times and in relating family lore and regional information. Our trip to Ulster was also serendipitous. My heartfelt thanks goes to Dr. William Roulston of the Ulster Historical Foundation in Belfast who took the time to share information with his unexpected visitors regarding the Scots-Irish diaspora and answered questions about eighteenth-century life in Donagheady Parish. Lastly, our trip to County Tyrone would not have been complete without encountering James Kee at the Sollus Centre at the Bready and District Ulster-Scots Development Association who not only generously gave his time to two Americans who happened to drop in to find out about the region but also took us about the countryside in search of pertinent Armstrong landmarks.

I owe a huge thanks to friends who have supported both my husband and me in our quests to learn more about the Armstrongs. Longtime friend Jane Horenkamp guided me to the Indiana Historical Society on my initial visit, and I was a frequent visitor to the Horenkamp home where sharing my research with husband Vince and nearby sister Charlotte Schwendeman helped me put my findings into proper perspective. Hilde and John Holsonback ensured that we saw necessary Revolutionary War sites in and around Charleston. My brother Richard Denning and sister Susan Hinton have seen me through the long years of pulling this project together and have both encouraged and housed me along the way. I also owe a thank-you to Declan Corcoran who tutored me on the mysteries of computer graphics.

Finally, I thank my husband, traveling companion, and forever best friend David O. Smith for his encouragement and his seemingly endless knowledge of both the American Revolution and the United States Army. He also provided the basis for this book’s two chapters detailing Armstrong’s experiences during the American Revolution and outlined information concerning the United States Army’s use of militia forces during later periods of armed conflict in Appendix 2.

PROLOGUE

Fort Hamilton, Northwest Territory

February 13, 1793

He stood alone before the jury. His six-foot frame honed by life on the nation’s frontier and its harsh and physically demanding conditions of clearing, living, and fighting in the wilderness, he was an impressive figure. Now thirty-seven, he had spent nearly half of his life in the army, and his career was on the line. After four frustrating months following his arrest based on nebulous charges, he had been apprised of specified indictments only four days before. He would be not only the defendant but also his own defense attorney.¹

To the court of the thirteen men who were handpicked by his immediate commander and principal accuser, Cpt. John Armstrong was a colleague to the senior officers who had served with him in peacetime and in battle, but four members were new to the command and potentially biased against him. The judge advocate was an avowed enemy with his own agenda. No stranger to court-martial procedures, Armstrong had successfully argued several cases as a young lieutenant in the Revolution and served on countless boards of officers or as a witness in courts-martial over a seventeen-year period. He knew his rights as outlined by the Articles of War and recognized the glaring improprieties of his own case.

Physically absent from the room but whose shadow was omnipresent was the officer who had initiated the charges against him, Brig. Gen. James Wilkinson. In Wilkinson, Armstrong met no ordinary foe. Although specific details of Wilkinson’s treachery and his dealings with the Spanish government as a paid spy were uncovered only after his death, rumors of collusion with New Orleans authorities abounded. With a history of vengeance toward those from whom he perceived slights to his honor, he later channeled his efforts toward ridding his path of individuals whom he felt stood in the way of his business or career advancements. In his wake stood both powerful friends whom he had courted and bitter enemies whom he had wronged. A would-be eighteenth-century Macbeth, Wilkinson now sought the ruin of the army’s commander, Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne. Armstrong’s elimination presented one step toward clearing the way to replace him.

Armstrong entered the court-martial with the deck stacked firmly against him. Following an army career that was defined by physical bravery, resourcefulness, loyalty to his commanders and his subordinates, and determination to define his conduct with honor and dignity, he had reached a crossroads in his career.

John Armstrong’s story and that of many of his fellow Revolutionary officers begins centuries before on the turbulent Scottish Borders. As a collective people, their character was forged in a society rewarding physical bravery and loyalty to clan and laird and later molded in Ireland into individuals with new respect for personal and group rights defined by law. Armstrong’s ancestors and those of his compatriots had been both granted and denied civic freedoms by England’s crown and Parliament. They had arrived in British colonial America seeking increased personal opportunities and were inherently sympathetic toward the colony’s eventual cause for independence. Armstrong’s choice of a military career was the logical extension of his ancestors’ experiences.

At the Revolution’s end, Armstrong jumped at the chance to continue military life in a proposed Peace Establishment, becoming one of only fourteen commissioned officers in its initial Pennsylvania unit. He saw its eventual growth to an army of 5,120 officers and men and witnessed its accompanying growing pains resulting from congressional indecision, multiple changes in mission, and mounting territorial unrest as settlers flooded into the homelands and hunting grounds of the region’s indiginous peoples. This is not his story alone but also that shared by his comrades in arms, as well as that of Native American nations affected by the nation’s expansion into the Northwest Territory.

Armstrong needed every bit of savvy gained from his army years, his Scots-Irish reliance upon his rights under the law, and his Scottish-bred personal courage to survive the challenge that he now faced.

1

On the Border and Outside the Pale

On the border was the Armstrangs, able men;

Somewhat unruly, and very ill to tame.²

The lonely B6357 road skirts the border between Scotland and England, paralleling the Liddel Water for much of the way from the Cheviot Hills southwest toward Canonbie, the River Esk, and the Irish Sea. Barren hills, dotted white with sheep left treeless from centuries of grazing, are balanced by densely wooded rises managed by the forestry commission and by the vivid green foliage along the paths of streams cutting through the valley. Farms and villages present a picture of tranquility in this sparsely populated corner of the country that increases on weekends and holidays with the arrival of tourists hiking and biking along the valley’s winding roads.

The quiet beauty of today’s Liddesdale belies its turbulent history. Over the centuries, John Armstrong’s forebearers and their neighbors found themselves in the midst of the chaos and devastation resulting from the collisions between two kingdoms. From 1040 to 1745, every English monarch but three either invaded Scotland or experienced the onslaught of its army. Scotland’s first king, Duncan (1034–1040), was murdered by Macbeth after losing a war to the Northumbrians. Macbeth was in turn slain after his defeat by another army from England. Malcolm Canmore (1058–1093) led his troops to England five times in hopes of conquering its northern provinces and was killed during his last attempt to do so. The Normans then attacked northward, taking their turn to initiate battle. After an interval of peace, Scotland’s King David took his army into England in 1136, and the fighting began again. During the next century, most towns on both sides of the border were brutally sacked and burned, the countryside ravaged from Newcastle to Edinburgh. Churches and monasteries became favorite targets; one Scottish army struggled home so laden with loot that soldiers drowned in the river beneath the weight of plundered chalices and crucifixes.³

By the late thirteenth century, England decided it was time to put Scotland firmly under its control. Thus began the Wars of Independence, which would ebb and flow for nearly a century. England’s Edward I, enraged by two Scottish leaders, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, ravaged the country so fiercely that he became known as the Hammer of Scots.

Following Bruce’s victory at Bannockburn over Edward II in 1314, Scottish forces looted, burned, and raped the northern counties of England as well as part of Ireland. Fighting between armies of successive English and Scottish kings, as well as infighting and intrigue between warlords affecting monarchy on both sides of the border, continued for over the next centuries. Caught in the middle were the borderlands of England and Scotland, counties of present-day Northumberland and Cumbria to the south, and the Scottish Borders and portions of Dumfries and Galloway to the north. Battles were won and lost; once forested areas were razed and the country laid waste on both sides of the divide, a meandering artificial line defined in various places by rivers and at others by desolate treeless hilltops with small valleys and gullies running from them. At places only deforested, windy landscapes existed to suggest where one political entity ended and another began.⁴

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Within the three hundred years following Bannockburn, the Borders became a geographic and political entity with its own set of rules and understood laws, a society that successfully and persistently ignored royal or central government while keeping its own ancient culture intact. Alistair Moffat, in his comprehensive work The Borders: A History of the Borders from the Earliest Times, notes that besides contributing often-told ballads of its own infamous citizens and generating descriptive words to the language of crime, it created little except trouble. This was reiver country, and Armstrongs were well in the middle of all the felonious activities that it harbored. Family clans with their allies and retainers preyed upon each other’s property, committed murder, engaged in multigenerational feuds, extracted blackmail, and fought for whichever country they preferred. Present day’s peaceful, lonesome stretches of land were once the gathering place of clansmen on horseback, at times in numbers of over a thousand, riding at night, raiding rival clans on both sides of the border, stealing cattle and anything of value, and leaving mayhem in their wake.⁵

Common folk lived in hovels of stone and turf that could be constructed within three to four hours’ time. To put up anything better would have been futile since they could well be destroyed again the next day. In places where wood was scarce, roof beams were removable so that at times of impending raids, they could be carried to the safety of the nearby laird’s house for safekeeping.⁶

The residence of a laird was commonly a large square tower, placed within a landscape that discouraged invasion, ideally upon a precipice, on the banks of a river rapids, or surrounded by marshland, heavy woods, rock, or perhaps a moat. Generally built in view of that of a laird of an associated clan in order to signal oncoming raids, some were surrounded by barnekins, enclosures of stone, the walls of which, according to a statute of 1535, were a yard thick and six yards high. When an alarm was sounded, surrounding village residents dismantled their dwellings; and the women, children, and livestock retreated to safety within their chieftain’s walls.⁷

Border clans had no formal councils, tartans, sporrans, bonnets, or septs, but were united in the most fundamental sense; they were groups of related families who lived near one another, were conscious of a common identity, carried the same surname, claimed descent from common ancestors, and banded together when danger threatened. Loyalty to the laird was paramount. In this reciprocal arrangement, the tenant rendered service to the laird as he worked on his estate, harvesting his grain, cutting and carrying peat, or thatching his buildings. His loyalty was manifested by his readiness to defend his laird’s property when raided and to avenge slights to his honor. The laird’s wealth consisted chiefly of cattle. He needed his kinsmen to acquire, guard, and transport these herds to market. In return, the laird assumed the responsibility for his kinsmen’s protection. Without his tenants, the laird could not exist; without the laird’s protection, his tenants could not survive.⁸

In the Border society, a man considered himself first and foremost as his surname. Names not only stood for family, they were the binding agent amid all the disorder and chaos inherent within the reiver system. Nationality was a distant second. In the absence of law and order and the ineffectual presence of a weak or remote central government, clan loyalty was all the security that most people had. With this relationship also came the observance of alliances, bloody interfamily and at times intrafamily feuds, and readiness to defend his laird and, by extension, himself in times of danger. Borderers were a martial breed whose descendants would someday provide the backbone of the Continental Army’s resistance to Britain.⁹

In the agrarian society, Borderers grew corn, barley, oats, and rye in sufficient quantities to feed themselves, at least on the Scottish side where conditions were generally less rugged and the soil more fertile. They raised cattle for food, as well as draught purposes, and sheep, mainly for wool. Both activities, while requiring little in the way of manpower, needed comparatively large areas of land to support a family in any degree of comfort. This was not easily achieved. The increase in the birthrate since the days of the Black Death in the mid-1300s had led to a degree of overpopulation that centuries of warfare had not succeeded in abating. In contrast to the sparsely populated region today, the Border valleys were actually overcrowded. The custom of dividing one’s inheritance equally between male heirs led to endless subdivision of lands with each successive generation receiving property so small that its size became uneconomical, providing neither a fair living for those who farmed nor a reasonable amount of food to supply a growing population.¹⁰

The shortage of usable farmland further complicated in some areas by the presence of bogs and nonarable land, led clansmen on both sides of the border to find their source of subsistence by armed plunder that reached its peak in the sixteenth century. While both governments officially deplored its existence, they exploited the practice to meet their own ends. The Borders provided an ever-ready source of fighting men, a permanent mobile task force to be used when war broke out. George MacDonald Fraser, in his book The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers, notes that the Borders provided a bloody buffer state that absorbed the horrors of war; its social chaos was almost a political necessity.¹¹

The Borderers were reivers and raiders, or thieves and riders. Their collective wealth revolved around the acquisition of cattle; but they also targeted oxen, milking cows, sheep, goats, and pigs, as well as whatever household or monetary goods they might plunder during their raids. Horses too were prime for lifting, essential not only in plying the raiders’ mode of income but also for supplementing oxen in working the land. Reivers might even be inclined to steal the dogs that had been trained to track them, hence completely turning the tables on their victims. Nobody on either side of the border was safe. In the morning, a man might be rich in flocks and herds and by evening be without anything, not even a roof over his head. Nor did distance necessarily spell safety, the English penetrating far into Scotland and the Scots lifting cattle well into present-day Cumbria and Northumberland almost as far south as Newcastle.¹²

Riding season was generally from autumn to spring when nights were long, chance of detection less and escape easier, while summers were devoted to tending cattle on higher ground and growing crops for subsistence. Reivers gathered on the frontier on frosty nights, often with members of neighboring clans, and threaded their way on horseback through mazes of pathways toward their target of the evening. Upon completing their mission, they returned home through secret routes, their stolen booty rarely recovered. When followed by victims of an evening’s raid on a hot trod, they would lead their pursuers into marshes that locals knew well but which served to trap outsiders. Their light and fast-moving horses were trained to adjust their strides in order to avoid getting trapped into the bogs that dotted the area.¹³

Borderers were a tough lot. In a land caught in the crossfire between political entities that invaded each other with frequentcy, they were hopelessy mired in a seemingly endless struggle between two nations. Challenges of survival in peacetime often mirrored those in war. The Borders had never known the rule of law; its inhabitants participated both as partisans in warfare between nations and as thieving perpetrators during periods of warlike peace that ensued in the interim. Somehow, they managed to achieve a status quo in those uncertain times. Sometimes victims and sometimes aggressors, they alternated between times of having their possessions raided and those when they plundered the goods of others. To keep an enemy from being able to pillage their livelihood and possessions, they unthatched and dismantled their stone cabins so that there was not much to burn and torched their homes and fields, fleeing to the safety of their lairds’ towers. In times of dire crisis, they fled to the hills and the wilderness with their livestock and all they could move. During transborder conflicts, they conducted warfare by ambush, cutting supply lines and constantly harassing their invaders. Borderers learned to live on the move, to cut crop subsistence to a minimum, and to rely on the meat they could drive in front of them. They could build a house in a few hours and had no qualms about abandoning it; they could travel great distances at considerable speed and relied on their skill and cunning to restock their supplies by subsequent raiding.¹⁴

To Border inhabitants, times of war and peace were not very different. No side ever achieved decisive victory. Scots, usually at a disadvantage when combating the English both in the attack and defense of their strongholds, engaged in defensive warfare. They avoided pitched battles, preferring protracted war to exhaust the will and resources of their invaders. By destroying their own grain and any material that might afford relief to the enemy, they engaged in the devastation of their own countryside. Wars were never truly won or lost; in peacetime, rival clans never proclaimed victory. Warfare, full scale or communal, was always liable to break out again. There was no future for the Borderer in trying to lead a settled existence. Might was right, and the weakest, unless supported by a strong surname, were out of the running. Godfrey Watson, in his book The Border Reivers, compared the process to a constant, ongoing version of musical chairs. There were limited numbers of cattle and sheep on the Borders and a fixed number of people to live off them. Livestock was regarded almost as a floating commodity, common to all, so that reiving became a game in which everyone reimbursed his losses with someone else’s stock and only the weakest or least fortunate were the losers.¹⁵

The endemic violence of the raiding culture affected Borderers’ attitudes toward work, time, land, wealth, rank, inheritance, marriage, gender, and personal relationships. Pastimes reflected a competitive physical culture. Borderers played football, a precursor to present-day rugby, soccer, and American football, and held horse races, both of which were frowned upon by authorities because they were commonly used as covers by groups plotting raids or other suspect activities. They were horsemen who regarded pedestrians with contempt. Hunting, hawking, and fishing were popular, often providing an excuse for Anglo-Scottish fraternization. They gambled on cockfights and routinely wagered the spoils from a recent raid on a card game.¹⁶

Churches had once dotted the border but over time had been vandalized and laid to waste. The administration of religious rites became irregular, and a monk would visit villages once a year to solemnize marriages and baptisms. Robert Bruce Armstrong suggests that it is not surprising that inhabitants paid little attention to their religious duties. Efforts of the Catholic Church to restrain their excesses had so little effect that three years after his excommunication, an Armstrong laird, Sym of Whithaugh, boasted that he and his men had been instrumental in the destruction of no fewer than thirty parish churches. Fraser relates the tale of a visitor to particularly troublesome Liddesdale who, finding no churches there, inquired, Are there no Christians here? receiving the reply, Na, we’s a’ Elliots and Armstrangs.¹⁷

During nighttime raids, reivers in their thick leather jackets, or jacks, and distinctive steel helmets, carrying their eight- to thirteen-foot spears, swords, and daggs, or large pistols, swooped down upon their targets on horseback. The size of the party depended upon the target. Smaller operations required six to eight riders. By contrast, a great laird might begin his tryst at a common muster point, gathering some two thousand men in the saddle. The sight of armed riders must certainly have been terrifying to weaker targets. It would probably be little comfort to them, however, that chroniclers of earlier times tended to paint the riders as honorable thieves.

Bishop Leslie (Lesley), sixteenth-century bishop of Ross, described Borderers as being reluctant to cause blood to be shed except in the instance of a feud, for they have a persuasion that all property is common by the law of nature, and is therefore liable to be appropriated by them in their necessity, but that murder and other injuries are prohibited by the Divine law.¹⁸

George MacDonald Fraser notes that while there may be some basis of truth to this reference to a code of honor, written accounts from the era are rife with references to broken promises, unredeemed assurances, and downright treachery. There appear to have been times when Borderers used more prudence during raids because they did not want to start a blood feud. Borderers on both sides had more in common with each other than with fellow countrymen who lived outside the area. Intermarriage was common, and family clans often had branches on both sides of the border. A bond of professionalism existed between the reivers, and fugitives from the law on one side might find refuge on the other, much to the chagrin of the pursuing jurisdiction.

Fraser comments on the more romantic picture of the reiver as rough but generous, a product of his times who was no doubt a troublemaker but who was basically a decent person, having some peculiar patriotic aura about him as he set out upon his raids. He contends, however, that recorded incidents indicate that there would be little that would be considered attractive about this way of life. Treachery and intrigue, alliances and revenge, and a practice of blackmail for protection were all parts of the system. Blood feuds were rampant. Although not confined to the Borders, retribution of this form for a murdered kinsman was more common in this area than in any other part of Scotland. Raids were a fact of life and could be cruel. Fraser says that the Border reiver can be seen as he was—not at all heroic, but a nasty, cruel, mean-spirited ruffian who preferred a soft target provided by small farmers, widows, and lonely homesteads. He rode with overwhelming force, destroyed wantonly, beat up and even killed his victims if he was resisted, and literally stripped them of everything they had.¹⁹

Graham Robb, however, in his book The Debatable Land: The Lost World between Scotland and England, suggests that it would be a mistake to assume that all Borderers were engaged in endless reiving. Records of the era are comprehensive and list many culprits’ names only once, and Robb notes that the majority of individuals named in records never took part in raids at all. He surmises that for many Borderers, the reiving expedition was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure and was perhaps a rite of passage. For every ballad recited by folklorists through the centuries commemorating famous raids or glorifying the feats of notorious reivers, there were likely a thousand well-worn tales regaling the of the day when Grandfather earned the right to adulthood by burning down a barn or making off with a farmer’s sheep.

Robb notes that the object of reiving expeditions was not to kill others but to take their animals and whatever else came to hand, preferably with stealth and cunning, and finds some truth to earlier Romanticists’ views that the reivers avoided physical harm to their victims. An entire season’s reiving along the western sections of the border in 1589–90 during the heightened era of border disturbances, is recorded in a list of bills or official complaints in Calendar of Border Papers, prepared for English and Scottish wardens, or administrators. The largest raid was carried out by 204 riders, mostly Armstrongs and Elliots. A typical raiding party, however, was much smaller. The document lists a total of 53 raids, involving more than a thousand reivers, and in all those perilous high-speed excursions only three men were killed and two maimed. Another document lists unresolved complaints relating to offenses committed by men of Liddesdale, possibly the worst of the raiders’ roosts, between 1579 and 1587. A total of 123 houses were burned by more than 2,000 reivers in seven raids. Eleven men were killed, but all those perished in two raids led by the exceptionally violent and remorseless Armstrong, Kinmont Willie.²⁰

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Firmly in the midst of the Border society were the Armstrongs, often described as the most troublesome and feared of the riding clans. They comprised a large force, often aligning with neighboring families, and probably were responsible for doing more damage than any two families

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combined in Scotland or in England. At the height of its power around 1527, the clan, with its retainers and allies, could field around three thousand men. Although the family may have originated on the English side of the border, its power during the pivotal fifteenth and sixteenth centuries lay in Scotland. Its principal location was in that hot spot of the Scottish marches, Liddesdale, home to the clan’s lairds at Mangerton, Whitlaugh, Raltoun, and Ailmore, their towers so close along the Liddel Water that their properties almost touched. The family’s place of refuge was the Tarras Moss, described by Scott as a desolate and horrible marsh through which a small river flowed. Family offshoots, or graynes, also resided in Annandale and Eskdale in the Scottish West March, as well as in the English West and Scottish East Marches. The family frequently rode with their neighbors, the Elliots, Nixons, and Croziers.²¹

Armstrongs were also present in what was known as the Debatable Land, that narrow tract of land running northeast from the Solway Firth that had served as a buffer between the two nations for several centuries. The whole area, only about ten miles long and six at its greatest breadth, assumed nuisance value out of all proportion to its geographical size. It was in that section of the Scottish West March that both England and Scotland claimed ownership and whose occupants were proverbial thorns in the sides of both countries. Since neither England nor Scotland acknowledged the other’s claim of ownership, no side felt responsible for the activities of the people who lived there, and the area became a haven for the worst elements on the frontier. Here gathered a motley assortment of broken men who were English or Scottish as they pleased. The Armstrongs fit right in.²²

Many tales of Armstrong exploits are recorded in ballads and folklore. One citing not only the clan’s resourcefulness but also its gamesmanship toward flounting authority is especially revealing. Sir Robert Carey, the warden of England’s West March, led a force into Liddesdale to avenge rampages by the Armstrongs on the English side of the border in 1598. Alerted to its coming, they collected their few belongings, horses, cattle and sheep, retired to Tarras Moss where there was sufficient dry ground for their herds and plenty of timber with which to build shelters, and settled in, prepared for an extended stay. At one point they sent a message to Carey saying that he was like the first puffe of a hagasse, hottest at the first, and bade me stay there as long as the weather would give me leave.

Carey and his men had to bide their time while they quietly went to work to force the outlaws from their retreat. After some time he was able to position his men at strategic points around Tarras Moss in order to encircle the morass and block any exits. The operation was successful, and the miscreants were eventually arrested. Sir Walter Scott, in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, wrote that years later the people of Liddesdale would retell the story of Carey’s Raid but would add an additional detail. They related that although under siege, the Armstrongs were nevertheless able to send a raiding party into England and to plunder the warden’s lands. On their return, they sent Carey one of his own cows, telling him that, fearing he might fall short of provisions during his visit to Scotland, they had taken the precaution of sending him some English beef. Scott noted that the tale was too characteristic to be suppressed.²³

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As early as 1249, England and Scotland attempted to bring some semblance of law to the area. Violence, even in times of so-called peace, had become endemic, and ordinary laws of the land were totally inadequate. The number and nature of the crimes committed were such that normal processes of law were not appropriate. Accordingly, the Leges Marchiarum, or Border Laws, were enacted, providing rules, at least in theory, for a complicated game that was played out on the border. This code, supplemented as time when on, was based partly on written law and partly on local custom and included rules that were binding to both countries as well as to the handling of local infractions. Thus, as Watson summarized, A Borderer, therefore, was subject to three or four different collections of laws and regulations, which might well have been confusing if, in fact, he had paid attention to any of them.²⁴

Infractions of laws concerning transborder issues dealt with such actions as alerting the opposing side to the advance of one’s army or abetting it in the process, stealing goods from across the border, and harboring fugitives and liberating prisoners to more minor transgressions such as pasturing cattle or felling timber on the other’s side. Regulations adapted to local custom on both sides dealt with a myriad of issues such as murder, acts resulting in wounding or maiming, robbery, destruction of property, receipt of stolen property, perjury, or fictitious complaints.²⁵

Territory adjacent to the border on one side was divided into East, Middle, and West Marches with its counterpart on the other. Each had a governing officer known as a warden. Additionally, troublesome Liddesdale had its own agent, known as a keeper. The warden led the defense of his march against invasion during times of war and cooperated with his corresponding official in handling cases brought by opposing clans and individuals during times of peace. Though the rationale behind the system bears merit, the process had its shortfalls. Fraser notes that many of the wardens were themselves members of the worst raiding families or belonged to notorious feuding parties. Additionally, both governments used these positions to contain, embarrass, and spy on the other.²⁶

A warden oversaw the administration of a kind of martial law; he was all-powerful within his own area. If he thought fit to execute anyone who was caught red-handed, he did so and asked questions afterward. His office was a much sought-after appointment, not just for the power and prestige associated with the position but also for its perks that included provisions and forage for his personal guard of horsemen, payment to cover certain out-of-pocket expenses, and an official residence. He also stood to profit financially from the influence his position commanded.²⁷

A warden’s duties often involved assembling an armed force in times of war as well as in times of so-called peace. When summoned, every able-bodied man was required to bear arms for the warden’s forces to repel invasion or to keep order. Despite the holiday atmosphere of required muster days when the majority of the male population would gather, the duties involved in this system of conscription were not always to the liking of those drafted. An essential part of a warden rode was the burning of houses and of the crops of those singled out for retribution. Destruction of homes did not matter much to the Borderer since they could be quickly rebuilt, but burning crops upon which a neighbor was dependent for survival was a different matter. Watson notes that it was one thing to pursue someone who had just lifted your cattle or to help in carrying out an act of vengeance dictated by deadly feud, but it was another altogether to set out to punish people who might be related to you through marriage or with whom you might be allied and whose way of life, wherever they might happen to live, was much the same as your own.²⁸

The great familiarity between reivers on both sides of the border was a constant concern for wardens. At any moment, war might break out or a punitive raid become necessary. Borderers then demonstrated that they might be led but could not be driven, wearing handkerchiefs on their arms and letters on their caps that were seemingly used by individuals seeking recognition by the enemy in order to be spared during conflict. The crosses of St. Andrew or St. George worn in battle to identify that combatant’s nationality were so narrow that a puff of wind might have blown them from their breasts.²⁹

Wardens from opposing marches typically met at a location near the border on a regular basis during a day of truce. From sunrise of the meeting day until daybreak of the next, an armistice was to be declared so that all attending could proceed safely to the conclave and home again. It was here that petitions for redress for property stolen or damage inflicted could be presented, and here that warden courts would provide judgment on cases before them. Individuals who had received injuries from parties from the opposite side had first to present their complaints to their own warden who in turn forwarded them to his counterpart. The accused were then exchanged, allowing the alleged perpetrators to be tried by their own wardens. Trials were subsequently held, money collected as payment for damages, and sentences pronounced.³⁰

Central to the system was the idea of honor and respect for one’s reputation for truthfulness and the keeping of a promise made. Perjury was taken seriously; its punishment was known as bauchling. Proven liars and oath breakers were loudly and publicly vilified at warden meetings by bauchles who, among other tactics, carried gloves on the end of lances with which they pointed to men in question. A Borderer, having once pledged that he would make amends to an injured party, was expected to follow through on his promise. Chroniclers attest that a Borderer, when captured committing a felonious act, was customarily not confined nor arrested. He simply acknowledged that he was indeed a prisoner, and the time and place were set at which he was expected to meet to discuss his ransom.³¹

Punishments were severe. Guilt of treasonable offenses demanded decapitation while conviction of crimes involving other offenses might be addressed with less ceremony, giving rise to the term Jedburgh justice, when men were said to be hanged first and tried afterward. Despite the serious outcomes of some trials, such occasions apparently provided an occasion for some frivolity. All did not conclude peacefully, however. B. Homer Dickson describes one day of truce when booths were erected, drink was sold, and an impromptu fair set up. Unfortunately, the mirth and good fellowship that began the meeting dissolved when the two wardens began to argue, and their respective sides set to work with sword and spear and bended bow.³²

Most cases were satisfactorily resolved, but some were not. The types of crimes heard by the wardens at their courts could be either relatively simple to discern or clouded by other factors. In his work The Debatable Land, Robb attempts to clarify decisions cited in court documents. Once-in-a-lifetime reivers usually returned the stolen goods or paid remuneration. The murderous reiver armies of a few petty warlords, hardened by military experience in the service of one nation or the other, fell into another category altogether, as did offenders engaged in long-running feuds, participants in wardens’ punitive raids, some of whom were inspired by greed of revenge, and wandering gangs of professional thieves originating from outside the jurisdiction during the years of famine in the late sixteenth century.³³

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A pivotal event in the history of the Borders occurred in 1600 when, as one version of the story goes, the actions of gentlemen in attendance of Sir John Carmichael, warden of the Scottish West March, offended the family of an elderly member of the Armstrong clan. Vengeance for this perceived slight of honor ensued, and Carmichael was killed on June 16 near Langholm where he was to hold court. James VI, incensed by this last deed, ordered the succeeding warden to pursue the murderers relentlessly. Carmichael had been appointed warden of the area in preference to that of a Border chieftain, as had been the usual custom. Fraser notes that another reason for the assault may have been that Carmichael was regarded as an honest and efficient warden who served his post well and as a result had incurred the ill will of the locals. Murder plots were planned for him, but it was the Armstrongs and their associates who caught up with him. Although it took several years to do so, culprits were eventually captured, tried, and hanged.³⁴

Three years later, James VI of Scotland became James I of England, assuming the thrones of two nations upon the death of his cousin, Elizabeth I. Determined to unite the two countries into one, to bury old quarrels and to keep the peace, his efforts to rid the Borders of their criminal elements increased. A final blow came the same week as he began his journey to England for his coronation when a group of two hundred Armstrongs with their retainers made a raid into present-day Cumbria, killing inhabitants and carrying off whatever booty they could. A furious James then sent an armed force after clan members with the instructions to wipe them out. Strongholds in Liddesdale were razed, and so many Armstrongs were put to death that they, as well as other clans James targeted, eventually accepted the fact that their old way of life was over.

James altered the time-honored way of life on the Borders. March law, which had ensured the region’s peculiar unity and independence, was replaced by the law of the land. The old system of trods, trysts, bills, and bauchling was civilized and moderate by comparison with that he employed to pacify its population. Minor theft became punishable by death, and as the reivers were about to discover, state justice could operate with terrifying speed. Borderers who disturbed the pious dream of unity had been living for many years in a country in the middle of Britain, which was neither Scottish nor English. Those mysguyded men were now to be eradicated. All theeves, murderers, oppressouris and vagabondis, declared James in 1604, must be rooted out; and severe and indifferent justice ministered upon all offenders. Technically, the purge was not a massacre since all those who were put to death received a trial. The trial, however, came after the execution. This efficient system was considered by the king an infinitely better means of furthering God’s plan than the laws and customs of the Marches, which were now no longer in existence.

The other preferred solution to Border anarchy was James’s order for the banishment from Scotland of all idle persons, including fairground charlatans, buffoons and strolling bards, and any call themselves Egyptians. All were to be expelled to some other place, where the change of aire will make in them an exchange of their manners.³⁵

The Armstrongs were not so easily gotten rid of. In 1607, a year after the execution of several of their number, they and the neighboring Irvins were still ensconced in every corner of the Debatable Land. Bent on self-destruction or unable to mend their ways, many had managed to break out of prison or to return from abroad. There they impeded and stayed the men who were sent to conduct a fresh survey of the area at the behest of Maxwell and Douglas, the new owners of the land granted them by the king. At that point, the men given the job of purifying and policing the Scottish Marches believed that deportation and trials were a waste of time and engaged in full-scale blitzkrieg.³⁶

James didn’t stop there. He appointed a board consisting of five Englishmen and five Scots to try Border criminals. No longer would an offender on one side be able to evade justice by fleeing to the other. Twenty-five mounted police were put on the border, and common folk were prohibited from carrying weapons.³⁷

To weaken the Border clans further, a commission sat for twenty years to examine titles and property deeds. Since records more than likely had been destroyed by fire over the years, the inquiry also provided an opportunity for the adjudicators to increase their own holdings in cases where plaintiffs could not substantiate their claims. The halfheartedness with which some Border chiefs threw off their allegiance to the Catholic Church during the time when a Protestant king ruled both Scotland and England did not help their case, as others who had made more effort to do so received honors and lands. Much of the land encompassed within present-day Scottish Borders came into the possession of the Baccleuchs and remains in the family’s ownership today.³⁸

The king’s efforts to bring the Borders into submission were as violent as the world he sought to destroy. Gallows were used extensively on the English side; thrifty Scots saved the expense of a rope by drowning their targets instead of hanging them, sometimes ten to twenty at a time. Entire families were outlawed en masse. Luckier individuals were conscripted by Walter Scott of Buccleuch to fight as mercenaries in Spain. Others moved by choice to newly formed Ulster plantations although some were banished there as a result of proceedings against them in the courts. Some permanently migrated to the English side of the border, and one branch of the Armstrongs relocated to the Netherlands. By 1610 to 1620, the Armstrongs, with few exceptions, had all but disappeared from their Liddesdale stronghold.³⁹

Ulster

Under what circumstances John Armstrong’s ancestors left Scotland for Ireland or, indeed, the identity of his immigrant forefather may never be known; but examination of individual histories presented in James Lewis Armstrong’s Chronicles of the Armstrongs suggests a few possibilities. Christie’s Will, grandson of the notorious Johnnie of Gilnockie, emigrated to County Fermanagh sometime after 1630. Possibly one of his sons or accompanying Armstrong retainers left the plantation there and found his way to neighboring County Tyrone, recorded home of John’s grandfather, and settled there at a later time. Departures from Ulster during times of crisis and the return of settlers from Scotland at their conclusions when leases on war-ravaged land were cheap make this scenario plausible. Another possibility lies with few surviving Armstrong soldiers who, after having been conscripted to serve in the European wars, found upon their return to the Borders that the family’s land and property had been appropriated by others and may have ventured to Ireland at that time. Finally, and probably most likely, members of Armstrong graynes outside the hot spots of Liddesdale and the Debatable Land were drawn to the Plantation along with other Lowland families during its formative years. James Lewis Armstrong lists names of sons and grandsons of some known Liddesdale reivers who had established themselves outside the valley in lands farther to the west and into the English Borders. This population may have been ripe for the migration across the Irish Sea during the early to mid-1600s.⁴⁰

These émigrés, the Armstrongs with their fellow Borderers and other Lowland Scots, were all part of a master plan to bring a civilized Ireland into Britain’s realm. Ireland had long been England’s wild stepchild. Ever since Norman King Henry II (1139–1189) invaded Ireland, the English had tried repeatedly to conquer or to pacify the island by one means or another. By the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), England was able to maintain only a foothold in the countryside consisting of little more than an area around present-day Dublin. Any territory outside the pale was inhabited by those whom the English regarded as Wild Irish, who lived in poverty under the control of powerful chieftains.

Elizabeth’s greatest problems lay in Ulster. The northern section of Ireland was then controlled by Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Red Hugh O’Donnell, Lord of Tyrconnell, who led an alliance of clans against the English in 1595. Elizabeth dispatched Charles Blount, Eighth Baron Mountjoy, who conducted a relentless campaign of destruction of food, houses, and cattle. Starvation and defeat induced the Irish to submit just as the queen lay dying. Mountjoy’s slash and burn strategy nevertheless paved the way for eventual colonization in that newly depopulated area.⁴¹

James’s original plan called for distribution of approximately one-half million acres to be assigned primarily to nobility and gentry from England and Scotland; but smaller allotments were also to be apportioned to veterans of the Irish wars, London companies, the Anglican Church, and Trinity College of Dublin. Additionally, land was set aside for the establishment of forts and towns, and finally, parcels were allotted to Irish of good merit who presumably would be able to take on native Irish as tenants. Among the grants made was that to James Hamilton, the First Earl of Abercorn who would colonize that part of the county of Tyrone in which John Armstrong’s family eventually resided.⁴²

From its inception, Ulster became the location of three peoples, each with different roles to play in the unfolding history of that part of Ireland. England was the absentee ruler; and at various times over the next 150 years, settlers of all country origins both profited and suffered under the politics and policies of its Parliament and Crown, its internal crises, and its church. The Scots, the eventual predominant population, brought with them the potentially unifying factor that later solidified their identity, the Presbyterian Kirk. Native Irish found themselves almost always on the wrong end of English policy. The interweaving of these three entities and the fallout from ecclesiastical, governmental, and economic policies directed from England were to play a major role in the gradual decision of approximately a quarter-million Ulster Scots to emigrate to America during the next century.

The Ulster Plantation eventually succeeded. There were, however, times of struggle for settlers arriving in the early years. Many absentee landlords appointed dishonest agents to oversee their holdings, and the general quality of settlers, particularly from Scotland, was regarded as poor. Firearms were few, and prospects for establishing an effective defense against a possible Irish uprising were slight. The condition of the land granted to tenants varied, and some areas included wastelands that had been ravaged by war.⁴³

Threats, particularly to early settlers, were numerous. Many native Irish, removed from their lands, had been driven to the mountains or woods and lived by plunder. Large flocks of wolves roamed at night and often preyed upon settlers’ cattle. The land was initially unfenced and undrained, much of it covered by woods, providing a safe haven for outlaws. On the other hand, rents were low and labor cheap. Initial laws banning the hiring of Irish labor were repealed, and settlers could get help for their farms. Renegade Irish were eventually caught, woods cleared, and swamps drained. With their lands leased at a nominal rent, their clothing and tools self-constructed, their planting of flax and abundant supply of wool providing materials for a fledgling textile industry, and livestock to sell, the colonists soon began to thrive.⁴⁴

The arrangement seemed like a good deal for everyone concerned—everyone, of course, but the native Irish who were granted the poorer lands in less-accessible districts. Allotments to the English and Scots were kept together so that they might form communities and not mix with or marry the locals. The Irish were to be supplanted; they were to be regarded as little more than annoyances to be subdued and controlled. Summarily driven off the lands their ancestors had farmed for generations, they had no rights to their own institutions nor voice in their government. The manifestation of this concept was to haunt Ulster repeatedly in years to come.⁴⁵

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The first pivotal crisis to threaten the welfare of the Ulster plantations coincided with the appointments of two Englishmen. In 1633, Thomas Wentworth was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland, and William Laud became Bishop of Canterbury. Wentworth, upon coming to Ireland, was responsible for instituting two key policies, one economic and the other religious. While credited by James G. Leyburn in his work The Scotch-Irish: A Social History as an able man who was personally unselfish, honest, and intent upon giving Ireland stability and prosperity, he was also unwavering in his administrative policy. In order to protect the English woolen industry, Wentworth prohibited Ireland’s own production of that commodity. Realizing the adverse impact the measure would have on Ireland’s economy, however, he used his own money to foster a linen industry that later became a substantial source